Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(JNS) - Israeli artist Yaacov Agam, considered to be the father of the Kinetic Movement in modern art, died on Sunday at the age of 98, the Agam Museum announced. Agam, who was awarded the Israel Prize for Visual Arts in April, was known for works that incorporated movement, light, color and viewer interaction. A public memorial ceremony was held on Monday at the Agam Museum in the central city of Rishon Letzion, followed by the funeral, which was scheduled to depart from the plaza of the...
(JNS) — The Islamic Republic of Iran must rein in its terrorist proxies in Lebanon, U.S. President Donald Trump insisted on Sunday, without naming Hezbollah. “Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder,” U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sunday. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization is a “malignant cancer,” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said earlier on Sunday, notin...
(JNS) — The Islamic Republic won the “2026 Iran War,” according to the Wikipedia page for the conflict. But when the crowd-sourced encyclopedia, which has a documented history of anti-Israel and antisemitic entries, cites news reports in a footnote ostensibly to support the claim that Iran won, it draws reader attention to sources that state that Iran wasn’t decimated or emerged in a better position in some ways. Not that it won. “So, who actually won?” states an Indian Express article, which is the first reference in the Wikipedia footnote. “T...
(JNS) — Keir Starmer on Monday resigned as Britain’s prime minister and leader of the U.K. Labour Party, seven weeks after suffering a defeat in the May 7 local elections. Speaking outside 10 Downing Street on Monday morning, Starmer says he spoke to King Charles III and informed him of his decision to resign, the BBC reported. Starmer said the Labour Party asked him whether he was best placed to lead it into the next general election. He said he “heard the answer” to that question and “accepts that answer with good grace”. The outgoing premier...
(JNS) — Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced on Thursday that he would be cutting ties with the office of E.U. High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas “until she retracts the blood libel she directed at the world’s only Jewish state.” Kallas “has for some time now been acting obsessively and with blatant unfairness toward the State of Israel,” Sa’ar tweeted, responding to reports that the European official, during a closed-door meeting, likened Jerusalem’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa u...
(JNS) - National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Friday called for a dramatically intensified Israeli military response against Lebanon following a Hezbollah drone attack that killed four IDF soldiers in Southern Lebanon. "For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn," Ben-Gvir posted on X. The remarks came hours after the military announced that four IDF soldiers, including Lt. Col. Dor Gedalia Ben Simhon, commander of the 52nd...
(JNS) - Cape Verde winger Hélio Varela, who plays for Israeli Premier League club Maccabi Tel Aviv, scored with his first touch after coming off the bench in a 2-2 World Cup group-stage draw against Uruguay in Miami on Sunday evening local time. Varela, 24, found the net in the 61st minute, moments after entering the match, helping Cape Verde secure a point. Born in Portugal, he represents Cape Verde at the international level. Israel's Foreign Ministry and Maccabi Tel Aviv highlighted the...
(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords showed there is “genuine respect” for the Jewish state across the region, Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said on Tuesday. Defrin opened his remarks to the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem by telling attendees he wanted to share “something more personal: my perspective on where we are today and why, after everything we’ve witnessed, I am very optimistic.” “Israel is a small country, living in a very difficult neighborhood,” he said. “As Israelis, we...
(JNS) - The Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund Board of Directors approved a budget of four million shekels (~$1.3 million) to upgrade the Nova Memorial Site and the Iron Swords Forest in Israel's northwestern Negev, the organization said on Thursday. Both sites have become national memorial spaces in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion on Oct. 7, 2023, with the Nova Memorial Site alone attracting more than a quarter of a million visitors during the first four months of 2026, according... Full story
(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the peace deal with the Iranian regime had been completed. “I hereby fully authorize the toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the U.S. Naval blockade,” the president stated just before 5:30 p.m. in Washington. “Ships of the world, start your engines. Let the oil flow.” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose government has served as a key mediator, wrote on X that the United States and Iran had reached a peace d...
(JNS) — Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Monday morning that the memorandum of understanding reached overnight by Washington and Tehran does not bind the Jewish state. “Israel is not subject to the United States, and we are an independent and sovereign nation,” he tweeted in Hebrew. The Israeli government’s duty is to its citizens, its soldiers and the Jewish people, he said. “Every time we succumbed to international pressure at the expense of Israel’s security, we paid in blood with interest. It was true in the Oslo...
(JNS) — Israel is not at war with Lebanon but with Iranian proxy Hezbollah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Wednesday in a video message to the Lebanese people. “Do you remember what Lebanon was like before Iran and Hezbollah turned it into a nightmare?” he asked. “Remember the cafés? Remember the culture? Remember the calm? All that’s gone because Hezbollah and Iran want to drag us into war over and over and over again. You deserve better. Your children deserve better,” he said. “You know by now that Israel will do what...
(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that an agreement with Iran would allow it to enrich uranium at low levels that “could never be used for military purposes.” “They can never go beyond a certain amount,” he said in a phone call with The New York Times. The report suggested that the deal could include a 15–20-year period of “suspension,” but it was unclear whether this would involve a total ban on enrichment. When asked whether the limit would match the 3.67 percent cap set under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,...
A senior Iranian cleric called on Muslims worldwide to attack U.S. interests, saying that waging jihad against the “infidel enemy” was a religious obligation “for anyone capable of carrying it out.” “It is incumbent upon the free people of the region not to remain silent in the face of the aggression of the Zionist-American enemy,” said Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, a top member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, in a statement carried by the semi-official Mehr News outlet. “America is a hostile infidel enemy, and jihad against it with all one’s stren...
(JNS) - The Israel Defense Forces struck military targets in western and central Iran early Monday after the Islamic Republic launched ballistic missile barrages at the Jewish state overnight. The military said the Israeli Air Force, guided by Military Intelligence, carried out strikes on military targets belonging to the Iranian regime. IAF fighter jets "completed a large-scale strike on strategic defense systems," according to a statement. "Recently, defense systems were deployed in numerous...
(JNS) — Iran on Monday warned it would carry out “far more severe and crushing” missile attacks against Israel if the Jewish state continued military operations against Hezbollah, its Lebanese proxy. The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, Iran’s highest operational military command, said Tehran delivered “heavy, targeted and costly blows” to Israel in its attacks on Sunday and Monday. “The cessation of armed forces operations is hereby announced,” the statement continued, according to a translation by Iran’s Press TV outlet. The annou...
(JNS) — U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa discussed the ongoing high-level trilateral talks between Israel, Lebanon and the U.S., in a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in Beirut on Monday. Issa, who was born in Lebanon, said the U.S.-brokered talks would resume in Washington, D.C. He praised the professionalism of Lebanon’s negotiating team. According to the State Department, talks will reconvene during the week of June 22. Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire on June 3. The ceasefire was to be contingent on Hezbollah, an...
(JNS) — Iran and its regional terrorist proxies fired more than two dozen ballistic missiles at Israel overnight on Sunday and into Monday, sending millions of civilians running for bomb shelters. An Israeli military official told reporters on Monday that 22 ballistic missiles were launched by Tehran overnight, in addition to two projectiles fired by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists. As of Monday morning, 44 people had sustained injuries in the attacks, according to Israel’s Healt...
(JNS) — Members of NGO Monitor, an Israel-based research institute, signed an open letter on Sunday calling for an independent investigation of The New York Times following its publishing of an opinion column alleging Israeli authorities sexually assaulted Palestinian security prisoners. The column, penned by Nicholas Kristof, drew a flurry of criticism worldwide, culminating in the recent United Nation’s decision to place Israel on a list of parties suspected of committing sexual violence in conflict. The members of NGO Monitor’s Inter...
(JNS) — No rabbinic seminary has a future in the United States if it ordains anti-Zionist clergy, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, senior rabbi at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, a Reform congregation in New York City, said at the third “Re-Charging Reform Judaism” conference. “We have an obligation to discuss what we mean by ‘Zionism,’” the rabbi, who is president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said in a keynote address opening the two-day conference on Wednesday. “We have an interest to establish the biggest possible tent. I am a liberal plurali...
(JNS) — Israel controls approximately 60% of the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday. He added that he has instructed the Israel Defense Forces to expand that figure to 70% as part of its ongoing campaign against Hamas. Speaking at the Jordan Valley Conference, Netanyahu said Israel was continuing to increase pressure on the terrorist organization nearly three years after the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. “Israel controls 60 percent of the Gaza Strip,” the prime minister said. “My directi...
(JNS) — Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei threatened the United States and Israel, calling on Muslims worldwide to chant for the destruction of the two nations during the upcoming Hajj pilgrimage. “In various parts of Iran and the world, and continuing well beyond these blessed days, ‘Death to America” and ‘Death to Israel’ shall become the common chants of the Islamic ummah [nation],” Khamenei said in a written statement issued on the occasion of the Hajj and published in English by the semi-official ISNA news agency. The ayatollah cal...
(JNS) — During a visit with Defense Minister Israel Katz to the IDF’s 96th Division along Israel’s eastern border on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel’s enemies are seeking to infiltrate the country. “We take into account that our enemies want to invade the State of Israel, and therefore we rely on you,” Netanyahu told commanders and soldiers stationed in the area. Netanyahu and Katz toured one of the upgraded “water-line outposts” along the Jordan frontier and received briefings from IDF officers on effort...
(JNS) - Six men assaulted an Israeli man in London on early on Monday morning after hearing him speak Hebrew on the phone, he told police and the media. The Israeli, Shalev Ben Yakar, 22, also complained to police about the beating that he said the six men gave him outside the Solomon Hotel in Golders Green, The Jewish Chronicle of London reported on Monday. "[They caught me] completely off guard. I was not ready. I saw [them] coming [toward] me, and I had a suspicious feeling [about them], but...
(JNS) — Israeli Minister of Transport and Road Safety Miri Regev on Monday convened an initial discussion regarding the recent hantavirus outbreak, her office told JNS. Regev instructed her ministry to prepare measures aimed at preventing the virus from spreading into the Jewish state through border crossings or airports, according to the statement. A special team headed by ministry Director-General Moshe Ben-Zaken will coordinate with the Health Ministry on the issue. “At the moment there is no concern, but we are preparing all systems in adv...
